It is always nerve-racking coming into a new company and trying to break the ice. Ensuring that new employees feel comfortable is crucial to building a positive transition within a company. We thought it would be fun to ask Jeremy a few questions to get to know him a little better.

Q: What is your official work title?
A: Systems Support Specialist

Q: Can you tell us more about your professional experience/history?
A: I studied engineering at the Illinois Institute of technology, decided to join the military, and then went on to co-found an open source hardware project which aims to make learning electronics easier and more approachable to people of all ages.

Q: What do you like to do outside of work?
A: I’m a member of the Air National Guard and I’m also involved in the Maker Movement. When I’m not doing that I enjoy taking pictures and playing ukulele.

Q: What are your greatest travel experience?
A: I’ve done a lot of traveling in my life. Even though I’ve been to Paris, seen the Great Pyramids with my own eyes, and happened to fly over Yellowstone right as Old Faithful was erupting, I’d have to say that my greatest travel experience was coming home for Christmas after being gone for nine months.

Q: Favorite movie?
A: Serenity

Q: Guilty pleasure music artist?
A: The Pixies

Q: What is something that inspires you?
A: What inspires me most is how beautiful the world is. Even in places you wouldn’t expect.

Q: What would you say your professional goal would be now that you are employed at Percipia?
A: As a person who’s stayed at fair number of hotels I know how important hospitality is and I definitely want to improve that experience as much as possible. However, I also seek to learn as much as I can about voice over ip and enterprise technologies so that I can help our customers focus on what they’re good at.

Our CEO, Michael Velasquez, and Global Director of Sales, Kevin Yarnell, just got back from visiting our Dubai office this past week. This marks the second trip for both this year – a trip well worth the long flight!

Photo credit: tripadvisor.com

Michael and Kevin spent the bulk of their time overseas collaborating with one of our top partners, Cisco, within the UAE region, as well as with other great partners such as Interel. In addition, our team members visited multiple large hotel brands across the Middle East and Asia as part of our effort to capitalize on this growing region.

Photo credit: tumblr.com

Just as Percipia has begun to expand within the UAE, so has the region itself. In effort to prepare for the 2020 World Expo, the number of hotels in the UAE is expected to double! Dubai will hold the 2020 World Expo and is slated to open more than 35,000 hotel guest rooms between 2015 and 2020, bringing the total number to more than 100,000 guest rooms within the city alone!

Photo credit: expedia.com

Michael and Kevin had an extremely productive trip and felt right at home while staying at the Sheraton Jumeirah Beach Resort and Towers. With business booming it’s only a matter of time before another visit is around the corner!

It is always nerve-racking coming into a new company and trying to break the ice. Ensuring that new employees feel comfortable is crucial to building a positive transition within a company. We thought it would be fun to ask Sahal a few questions to get to know him a little better.

Let’s get started!

Q: What is your official work title?

A: My official work title is System Support Specialist.

Q: Can you tell us more about your professional experience/ history?

A: I’ve worked at lot of different jobs in the past including as a conversational English teacher in Shenzhen, China, as a Product Demonstrator at various grocery stores, and as a Social Services Assistant at a nursing home.

I spent spring semester 2012 in Beijing, China and helped a few of my friends poke holes in the Great Firewall. After I returned to the states, I built a website to help people get around censorship. I’ve been working on it since

Q: What do you like to do outside of work?

A: I love to travel, listen to music, bike, and watch tv.

Q: What are your greatest travel experience?

A: I took a road trip with my roommate a few years ago to the east coast. We met some cool people at a New York hostel and traveled with them to other cities.

I was in Thailand during last year’s protests against the Prime Minster. We were trying to get on a domestic flight out of Bangkok on the first day of the protests. After a fun night, having only slept a few hours, we left our hostel for the airport with five hours to spare. We waved down a few taxies until one finally agreed to get us to the airport. Although the highway entrances were blocked by protesters we still got to the airport quickly. Unfortunately, the driver charged us triple and we sat bored at the airport for four hours while Bangkok’s citizens exercised their democratic freedoms.

The most difficult thing I’ve done physically is climb Tiger Leaping Gorge in Lijiang, Yunnan, China. Through all the twenty-eight bends, I didn’t see one tiger…

Now on to the more personal questions.

Q: Favorite movie?

A: I really like bad Kung Fu movies with bad subtitles.

Q: Guilty pleasure music artist?

A: Rae Sremmurd

Q: What is something that inspires you?

A: I am inspired by everyone out there that tries hard to achieve their dreams.

Q: What would you say your professional goal would be now that you are employed at Percipia?

A: I want to learn a lot about supporting Percipia’s software.

Well there you have it! We are so happy to have Sahal join the team and contribute to the success of Percipia.